MYDDLETON’S RIVER

Half a century on, approached in imagination(mining buried treasure in the mind) it’slike waking up after a long sleep, lookingout on a bright morning, wipingaway a film of slumber from eyes dazzledby the dawn. It takes time for timeto dissolve now and resolve again thento a statue on a patch of green betweenbusy roads. Hugh Myddleton constructsthe New River running somewhere herebringing, gradient to gradient, sweet waterthrough the channels of my childhoodto London town and all the riversof Wales running through recent memory.

***Even then the river was a conduitfor feelings that ran just beyond perceptiontouching my life with knowledge of its presencebut not quite in the light. Light after alljust glittered on its surface while in the darkits waters ran deeper that I could fathombehind those streets and through those parksthat beckon, as dreams of things once vividbut now lost. What I know, and kneweven then is that I walked by streamsthat flowed out of the busy life of cities,that just through there or behind that ivied wallsomewhere was a gateway I avoidedwhich voided the silver waters down to Hades.

***Irrigations, flowings from the source;Is the essential river in its upper reachesOr where it floods, deep and wide?This New River (though no new river) wasmy becoming and now my past whichflows to meet me. Tributaries and connectingstreams run through, across and contrary. Chadwellsprings mixed with waters from the Lee.Severn and Wye trickle from peaty pools,meander from the same mountain, runningalong borders through towns, fields and woodsuntil worlds dissolve as fresh water tastes salt.Rheidol too streams from this source and thickensin its shorter course with lead from Myddleton’s mines.***

From any gateway to the Underworld we may emergethrough any gateway out again. Followingthe river into a culvert under a hill I exhaleon a path winding like Tywi through other hills;In this garden time is marked along the path by rocksfrom each age of the world while a hedge of flowerswinds along its other side to a fountain(a switch across a synapse into lost time).Water spirals through a cross-section of an ammoniteand drains into a lake. The Lady of the Lakeappears and disappears. Myddfai, Middleton Hall,a tower on a hill and a glass dome like the hills – What dissolves resolves again: places, shapes,substances in suspension suspire as substantial form.***

It was in that tower that the new journey began,began quietly, climbing steps that turned againand again into air gathering solidity to anchorlight to darkness as a world formed around meand rivers flowed in my veins as well as acrossthe molecules of my eyes. Looking outover the lost garden which time would rediscoverI turned back for a time of contemplation, waitingfor the flux to gather the configured forms,trace the connecting streams, leets, seepages;shafts running unseen below dividing rock bringinglight to the converging flood as these rivulets merge:a New River breaks free from its containing channelflows through space, time, imagination.***

Hugh Myddleton’s river poured into wooden pipestapped by London houses; his journey thenback to Wales where he tapped the veins of oreand for every ton of lead a grain of precious silverbase metal transformed as only those with craft and lorecanne knowe. Planted in a remoate placeand countrey, they tunnel into wooded slopesthese mines, and like his river find a familiarcalling from a darkness deep within.At the entrance to one adit: galenaand the glisten of fool’s gold (as they call it)iron pyrites to those that would be wisebut transformations there are here, slippagesbetween worlds, fooles and alchymicall wittes betwyntimes.***

So I changed (Hugh Myddleton had ThomasMiddleton to compose a metrical speechat his river’s inauguration) – like AntonioI changed : Saturn’s plumb line stirring the depths(swinging the lead?) transforming echoes,glitter of moonlight on the waters not yetuttered into being; anomie and heavyidleness become wantonness, life in the fullzest of discovery of itself. No matterit’s foolish to revel in the golden glow ofa new dawn. What is signified and whatsignifies are always, and yet never, arbitrary.I distil silver from the leaden waters of that river,gold from pyrites for a store of treasure.***

This valley and others spoiled by mines, yet wildstill with the scars that mar them. Myddleton’sworkings were shallow, though deeper than memorycould recall. Rust runs across discarded rock nowas iron and steel oxidize back into earth and water.Cwmsymlog, Cwmerfin, Cwmystwyth – valleys atjourney’s end with rivers running down to the seaas I run a slow course now against the backdropof these hills. What spark is it that recallsMyddleton’s mild river by these torrents through the rocks?There are moments when one place echoes another,when each remembered location in time steps out of isolationand flows with one purpose in a rush like these rocky streamsthough everything is as still as Myddleton’s barely moving river.